


Inosculation

by attackfish



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussion of rape but no actual rape, Gen, in which Zuko is a former rebel leader and Jet is a prince of the Fire Nation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-07-25 19:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attackfish/pseuds/attackfish
Summary: When Iroh comes to Ba Sing Se to meet with a White Lotus contact, he gets a lot more than he bargained for in the form of a boy who looks startlingly familiar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bunnyloverXIV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyloverXIV/gifts).

> This first chapter was written as a thank you gift for supporting RAICES, a charity that aids immigrants and refugees coming to the US and is fighting Trump’s crimes against humanity. She wanted a fic in which Zuko looks exactly like Ozai except for the scar.
> 
> This does not entirely fit the prompt, as it takes place in my Prince Jet Rebel Leader Zuko AU before Zuko has his scar. More for this AU can be found on my Tumblr at this tag: [[Link]](https://attackfish.tumblr.com/tagged/Prince-Jet-Rebel-leader-Zuko).

The first time he saw the boy, Iroh almost called him by his brother's name. But of course Ozai wasn't a harried teenager in an apron, serving him mediocre tea. "What's your name, child?"

"I'm not a child," he fired back testily, and then glanced around anxiously. More subdued, he said, "Zuko."

Iroh's eyes widened. "That's a Fire Nation name."

An ugly flush colored Zuko's face, eyes burning with badly hidden anger. "My Earth Kingdom mother gave it to me."

Iroh gave him his most pleasant smile. "I'm sure she had her reasons."

As Zuko marched away to another table, Iroh sipped his tea. Periodically, he felt the intensity of the boy's stare fall on him, hostile and ashamed.

o0O0o

"Where are you from?"

Zuko stopped in the middle of putting Iroh's tea on the table, eyes wide with fear and bewilderment. The boy had no ability to conceal his emotions at all.

"Gaipan," he said finally. "It's just a village. You won't have heard of it."

"In the northwest. The Fire Nation sent their army in twice. The second time, they made it into a colony, under the orders of the Dragon of the West, as a staging post to attack Ba Sing Se by water." Iroh let show nothing of his own emotions, voice as light as he could make it. "The first time would have been about sixteen, seventeen years ago."

That ugly flush returned.

"Ah," he said delicately. "There's no shame in it. Not for you. Anyone who tries to tell you there is, is just trying to make believe it can't happen to them and their family."

It had been Firelord Azulon's last campaign. Iroh remembered how his father had seemed when he came home, old and warn, and desperate to prove he wasn't. Zuko's yellow-gold eyes, fire eyes, found his own, and Iroh let him make his own assumptions.

o0O0o

He waved the White Lotus operative out of the private back room and shut the door behind them both. The tea shop had long since closed, and Zuko was the only one left to clean up after a pair of customers who should have left hours ago. "I'm very sorry. My Pai Sho game lasted much longer than I thought it would."

When the boy scowled like that, Iroh could almost suppose he had gone back in time, to before Ozai's teenage bouts of sulkiness had turned into dangerous cruelty.

"I'll see you again in a few days," the man said.

"I look forward to it!" Iroh smiled as Zuko's glower deepened. Once the other man had left, and the door was safely shut behind him, Iroh bowed his head contritely. "I really am sorry. I lost track of time."

"Whatever," Zuko growled, grabbing a towel and heading to the back room to survey the damage. "I need to get back to my kids."

"You are a little young for kids, aren't you?" Iroh observed, following him as far as the door to the private room.

"Yeah, probably." Zuko picked up the empty teacups and teapot, wiped the table down haphazardly, and started for the kitchen. When Iroh followed him there too, he snapped, "What do you _want?"_

"I was hoping I could ask you to walk me home." Iroh held up his arms. "An old man like me? It would make me feel much better if you were there to keep me safe. And while we walked you could tell me a little bit about yourself, and your children."

"They're not _my_ kids. They're orphans. From Gaipan. I brought them here, so they're my responsibility." Zuko kept his eyes on the teapot as he washed.

"That's very noble of you." Ozai had never taken responsibility for anything in his life.

Zuko shrugged, setting the teapot on the counter to dry and taking off his apron. "Not really."

"Learn to take a complement, child." Iroh smiled to take the sting out of his words. "Life will go easier for you."

Zuko snorted.

Iroh watched and waited as Zuko doused the oil lamps. As he extinguished one, two others, the two last ones, across the room, flickered out. "You're a firebender."

Zuko's head snapped up, his face unreadable in the gloom.

"Don't worry, I won't tell." Iroh opened his hand and filled it with flame.

For a moment, everything went still. The fire flickered, reflected in Zuko's wide, staring eyes. Then, that moment ended, and the stillness fractured. Zuko bolted out into the night, without even pausing to lock the door.

o0O0o

"You're not the only firebender I've met here," Zuko muttered as he put the teapot down.

"There's another firebender in Ba Sing Se?" he asked, startled.

Zuko nodded. "I met him on the ferry. He keeps trying to get me to 'join him', and serve him." Zuko huffed disgustedly. "Serve him, like we aren't all in the same boat here as refugees. He told me his name was Jet, but it didn't sound like a real name."

"It isn't." Iroh swallowed back his shock. "You should stay away from him."

"You know him?"

Iroh nodded reluctantly.

"I didn't like him," he said decisively. "He said he recognized me, said I looked like someone he knew, and I should recognize him. It was weird."

Iroh almost laughed. Of course Prince Jiten would see the resemblance. He might even have a guess as to what it might mean. His nephew was no fool. "If he is here, you and your children aren't safe. No one is, but especially not you. You need to get out of the city."

"Who is he?" Zuko's eyes narrowed. "How do you know him?"

"He's family," Iroh said simply. "I will help you and your children leave the city."

"Nowhere else in the Earth Kingdom is safe." Zuko whispered. "I brought them here, because it was supposed to be."

"I know."

The ground trembled. Iroh's cup clattered to the floor, shattered. When the rumbling stopped, the cry rang out, the wall had fallen.


	2. The Sweetest Fruit, the Strongest Wood

"You?" The Fire Princess laughed, incredulous. "Who are you? You're nobody, just a jumped up peasant my uncle likes. You really think you're going to face me?"

"I don't have to be anybody," Zuko said as calmly as he could with the power of the comet thrumming through him, plucking at his nerves. "Today is your coronation. Until the crown is on your head, you have to confront all challengers."

"Did my uncle teach you that?" she asked, smirking. "It's archaic. Nobody does that any more. You're adorable."

"It's still the law." Zuko glanced over her shoulder. "And the Fire Sages heard me challenge you. I challenge you on behalf of your uncle, Prince Iroh, for the Firelord's crown."

Instead of answering, she walked down the length of the courtyard to stop in front of him. It shouldn't have seemed as strange as it did that she was shorter than him. "So you're the firebender gutter trash my uncle wants to graft onto our family tree," she murmured. "I know all about you. You're not Fire Nation. You're not even a colony brat. You're just a halfbreed peasant. And Uncle must not care about you very much if he sends you to face me." Her smirk widened as she spoke for the Fire Sages to hear, "Okay, You can have your Agni Kai. This'll be over quickly."

It was. When her lightning came for him, he was ready.

o0O0o

At Firelord Iroh's coronation, the new Fire Prince knelt next to him, dressed in a prince's red silk, his short peasant hair gathered into an almost respectable topknot over the bandage. In the crowds below, the whispers had already started, whispers that Iroh was old and weak, that he had promised the boy the throne after him in exchange for fighting Azula, that he should be the one taking the throne as the one who had beaten Ozai's daughter, that he was Iroh's real son, hidden away all these years to hide the shame of a halfbreed bastard.

Zuko's one good eye wandered over the crowd. The burn Azula had given him to remember her by before she died, throbbed. His head swam. The royal physician had told him they wouldn't know if he had lost sight in that eye until the bandage came off. All he wanted to do was lie down. But as the crown came down into Iroh's hair, Zuko knew his day was far from over.

o0O0o

Zuko pushed aside the scroll as the Firelord walked in. "It doesn't matter how many times you make me read Sozin's writings. You're never going to convince me the war was a good thing for the Earth kingdom," he told him sourly. "I lived it, remember."

"I am not trying to," Iroh said, amused. "But it is wise to consider why Sozin believed himself justified so that you do not make the same mistake, Prince Zuko."

"Not likely."

"No," Iroh acknowledged. "Your mistakes will likely be entirely your own."

o0O0o

Zuko had visited orphanages before, in the Fire Nation, clapped politely when the children sang to him and asked them about what they were learning. He had been the grand and remote Fire Prince he knew he was supposed to be. It was about the show of royalty, and playing the part for his new people.

The journey to the Earth Kingdom wasn't about that. It was about meeting with the Earth King to discuss reparations repatriation of captured Earth Kingdom territory. It was about speaking civilly with a man who had stayed safe behind his walls as the war raged around him, so sheltered he didn't even know it was happening.

The stop in the small, unimportant Earth Kingdom village was not part of the official itinerary, but Zuko knew the Firelord had to know he would come. As one of the guards knocked on the door, Zuko pulled out the flame hairpiece and the ribbon holding his topknot in place. His hair fell down around his face, a little too long, except in the places it had been burned away, a little too smooth from the lotions and shampoos a prince could use, but still his hair, still something a little familiar. He longed for his scavenged red tunic and unscarred face, for something that would make him look less different.

The door opened. It was Smellerbee. Her eyes bulged. She dashed off, and a few seconds later came back with a round woman in country women's finery. Her eyes flicked to the hairpiece and the ribbon.

"Your Highness," she called him. Zuko barely heard. From within the tiny orphanage in the middle of the Earth Kingdom, endowed by the Fire Prince himself, the children poured out. Zuko fell to his knees as his forest children rushed into his arms.


End file.
